Edgy

Posted by derrick on May 20, 2008

John Martin aka Anne Elk demonstrates how a kayak is thick in the middle and thin on both ends

Rules are great things when they work. However there are times when rules are used as ways to cover up for distraction or lack of experience. In sea kayaking there are some rules that linger out there for no other reason than there are some folks who just don’t paddle very often but read a lot and love to debate what they’ve read. Certainly if they would just go out and spend more time on the water many of these rules they debate would become clear. Theory is a great place to start but it is certainly no substitute for experience. Just ask William Blake.

One of technique that seems to get plenty of debate is “edging”. The general idea is that by leaning or edging your kayak, more of the hull will come out of the water making it easier to turn. Why? Well again simply put, sea kayaks are fat in the middle and thin on the ends (as in the Brontosaurus theory on Monty Python). When the boat leans over more of those thin bits come out of the water. Where the debate comes in when you talk about which way to lean the boat.

I should jump in here and talk for a moment about the two ways we accomplish the task of leaning the kayak. One way is obvious. We lean over. In sea kayaking “leaning” means we bring our whole body over. Visualize your whole body being inflexible. As you tip to one side or the other your kayak will tip with you, or leans. The other way we lean the boat is called “edging”. When we edge the boat we are flexible at the hip. This way our upper body stays vertical to the water and only our lower body (the bit inside the boat) leans. In either case the boat itself leans over, the difference is in what our upper body is doing.

One of the most frustrating parts of my initial coach training was learning to demonstrate sweeps or to put it simply, to turn the kayak. The idea behind the demonstration being that you use your paddle to turn the kayak clockwise or counter clockwise in a complete circle while avoiding moving forward or backward. It’s not all that complicated really. IF you do it right. Where things get interesting is when you begin to add that second element. . . the lean. . . or edge if you like! The first trick is to remember that leaning and edging are often counter intuitive. In most instances you edge or lean out of a turn in a sea kayak. Just the opposite of what you would do on a bicycle. Make sense? However that “rule” comes with provisos. Which takes me back to that silly sweep demonstration.

When I was learning to demonstrate turning a kayak on a dime I would continually lean out of the turn. My model would always start out just fine but then I would find myself getting shaky and out of balance. Then of course I’d get told I needed to clean it up and feel like a hopeless git for the rest of the day. No matter what I did from then on I always ran into the same problem. I’d start out well, then get out of balance. On and on it went. It was not until I was giving this sad exhibition to a coach in the middle of the triangle off the coast of Tybee Island, Georgia, that I was finally asked, “What the hell are you doing???”! Good question! What the hell was I doing??

The problem was seeing the big picture while being blind to its separate parts. Conceptually it made sense. Spin your kayak to the left by leaning right. Simple. Yet in practice it never worked. When I started out using a forward sweep all would be fine. I’m leaning right and the bow goes left, however the second half was where it all fell apart. I would turn my body to the opposite side, reach back and continue the turn with a reverse sweep. What was missed when I was taught the reverse sweep bit was that this was a mirror image of the forward sweep, a separate move in an opposite direction. Thus, I had to lean the other way! Call this a memory point, “reverse sweep; reverse everything”. While these two moves; the forward sweep and reverse sweep are together turning the boat in one direction, individually each move is a mirror opposite of the other. The lean changes as well.

It’s hard to tell what was going on when I was first learning to demonstrate sweeps. Most likely the coach was distracted and just missed the lean. Still in recognizing my balance problems it should have hinted to something more in the technique going wrong. You can imagine that these days a good wobble sets off alarm bells when I’m watching someone as they learn their sweeps. It’s not always the lean but it’s worth checking. That’s the thing with rules. In those moments when we are distracted or out of focus our mouths can start quoting rules without even thinking about it. They tend to get hardwired. We have to keep in mind that often a rule is really a guide line and that each situation or student is different. A rule applied in the wrong situation can sometimes do more harm than good.